1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a person recognizing apparatus and a person recognizing method to recognize an applicable person using biometric information such as an image including at least a face (hereinafter, refer as a face image), a fingerprint image, an iris information, a hand geometry image, finger images, voice information, for instance, in the security management.
Further, the present invention relates to a passage controller to control passage of a passenger (for example, who enters/exits to/from a security facility using the above-mentioned person recognizing apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, this kind of person recognizing apparatus obtains biometric information of a person who is subject to the recognition. Biometric information of a person who is subject to the recognition is pre-stored in a registered information memory as registered information. Biometric information obtained from a person is collated with registered information stored in the registered information memory. Similar points of both biological data are obtained by this collation and an applicable person is recognized based on this similarity.
In such the person recognizing apparatus, however, a person may be erroneously recognized sometimes when collating a face image for age-related changes in features of a face, a posture of a person or a face direction. As a countermeasure to reduce this erroneous recognition, there is a proposed technology to automatically update dictionary (a registered information retaining means) recording biometric information of features of persons as registered information in advance.
For example, the Japanese Patent Application No. 1999-167632 discloses a technology to preset a re-registering threshold value higher than a recognizing threshold value separately from the recognized threshold value and update a registered information (a dictionary) when the similarity obtained in the collation is higher than the re-registering threshold value.
Further, the Japanese Patent Application No. 1998-312462 discloses a technology that is in a structure to reduce recognized threshold values in combination with the input of ID codes or personal identification numbers and update the registered information (a dictionary) when succeeded in the collation without reducing recognized threshold values.
However, in the technologies disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Numbers 1999-167632 and 1998-312462, the registered information (a dictionary) is updated only when a recognized person is fully confirmed. Therefore, only data closer to the learnt contents are learnt and the registered information is automatically updated.
In addition, information effective for reducing the erroneous recognition of registered persons is not a portion having a sufficient priority for an authentication threshold value but such data that becomes the number of points close to an authentication threshold value. Therefore, the automatic updating method according to the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Numbers 1999-167632 and 1998-312462 has a less effect. Further, when trying to have the system to learn the number of points close to an authentication threshold value using these methods, another person may possibly be learnt erroneously because whether the person is truly the recognized person is not confirmed.